1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to physical books, online digitally stored books, and Web-based search.
2. Background Art
Paper copies of books (physical books) have existed since before the invention of the printing press. Libraries throughout recorded history have housed collections of physical books in the form of printed books and hand written manuscripts. Access to these libraries has been limited because the actual physical book must be housed in one physical location and the user must be provided access to and possession of the desired physical book in order to gain access to its contents.
With the emergence of the Internet, the availability of physical books has increased. For example, locating a physical copy of a physical book has become easier with the advent of on-line search facilities of physical books such as Amazon and EBay. New and used physical copies of desired physical books can be purchased or leased by users remotely and then shipped to the purchasing user by post or other delivery service mechanism. Thus the universe of physical books available to the user has expanded dramatically from the days of brick and mortar book stores and sellers, and reserved and lending libraries.
Additionally, publishers such as O'Reilly have created digitally stored books that can be accessed by a user on-line over the Internet either for no charge or based on a subscription model or for the fixed fee. Electronic copies of such digitally stored books can often be downloaded to the user over the Internet for electronic storage on the computer system of the user or printed out in hard copy form.
On-line search over the public Web, universal book search engines or proprietary on-line collections allows for desired information to be located in a vast, ever expanding universe of books whose data and/or metadata is made available for search. Often, specific desired content or information can be pinpointed in the book using such electronic searching.
The information explosion that has occurred has made it increasingly difficult for the owner of a library of books (either in physical copy or digitally stored) to keep track of what is in her library or to determine which books contain desired information.